Ain't raining pennies from heaven? Try gold dust and precious gems...

Yes, you read correctly - gold dust and gems falling from heaven... This one'll be a longer story, if I want to really give it justice, which I do. It is as real and true as it sounds incredible. Personnally, I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't know those involved so well, and if I hadn't seen it myself. This is just a reminder of how supernatural God is.

It all started about a year ago now. See, every year, at our church, we dedicate the month of January, the first month of the year, to prayer and fasting. We do it to get focused for the year ahead, seek God more intensely and see what He has in store for the new year. Everyone in the church in encouraged to fast in any way they feel led to, whether it be for a day in the month, or the whole month, whether it's fasting TV, or sweets, or junk food, or everything but water. That's left between each individual and God. But the point is to focus that time to praying. And the cool thing is that God really does amazing things during that month, and as a result of that month.

Usually, near the end of the month, or at some point in February, we then have the Midwinter Meltdown - a weekend long conference that always gets the church all fired up. Supernatural things always happen at that conference. Last year was no different.

It was a couple weeks before the Meltdown, one night when we were at church, and someone called me over to check out Debbie Berlenbach's hair. I thought that was weird. I mean, she has cool funky hair, but why should I check out? Looking for lice? No. What they wanted me to see was the tiny sparkly dustlike gold covering her hair, even to the roots. My comment: "Nice, you put sparkles in your hair"... "No", she answered, "I didn't". "Oh", I replied, "so Kristen sprayed sparkles in your hair"... (Kristen is Peter and Debbie Berlenbach's daughter. She's just a couple years older than me, and she's always fashionable and beautiful. She'd be the type to spray sparkles in her hair, I think...)

Debbie answered: "No, no one sprayed sparkles in my hair; that's gold dust that's been falling all over our house for the last couple weeks. It's everywhere. Peter has it all over too." And he did, I checked.

My response: "WHAT?"

So, they went on to divulge the whole story. A few weeks before that night, Peter and Debbie had begun their fasting. They were seeking God for His supernatural presence. One morning, Peter woke up from a very vivid dream. He dreamt that he was covered with this gold dust and oil mixture, and that it was everywhere. I don't remember the details of that first dream, although he did tell me at the time.

When Peter awoke, he walked over to the washroom, still rehashing the dream. He looked in the mirror. Everything looked normal. He got busy doing some morning stuff, and then, happened to look in the mirror again. Suddenly, a golden dust and oil began to appear on his skin, on his hair, everywhere. He called out to his wife, Debbie, who was still sleeping in bed. When she joined him and looked at him, she was floored. There he was, all covered in gold.

From that day on, the finest gold dust began to fall all over Peter and Debbie's home. As it slowly fell from nowhere, it settled on furniture, tables, bed covers, everything, just like normal dust would. But this was no usual dust. It came to the point where Peter even had it incrusted in his belly hair. And they had to dust themselves off after stepping outside. This stuff covered everything.

One night, Kristen, who lives on her own, in her own home, was awaken by her dog who was being antsy and wanted out to do doggy duties. Her dog never had to go in the middle of the night, so she thought it was kind of odd, but went along with it. She was all sleepy, and let out the dog in the night. As she waited for him to come back, she switched on the light. The room looked different. As her eyes got adjusted to the light, she realized that everything in her house was covered with a fine layer of gold dust. She passed her finger on the dark wooden table, which left a distinct mark , whiping away a trace of the gold dust, leaving her finger covered with a film of gold.

At this point in the story, I was just amazed. I'd heard of things like this happening in other places around the world, to other people, and thought it was weird, although possible Hey, gotta stay opened minded - especially concerning God; He doesn't fit in a box. So although I was taken aback by this whole story, I knew Debbie and Peter Berlenbach, as well as Kristen, way too well to think they coud've ever made this up.

As she related the facts, Debbie went on to say that God had told her the gold dust was going to come into the church too. Cool. I wanted to see it.

So as I kept on my fasting and praying that month, I began to pray something like this: "Daddy God, I know you're all powerful, I know with you everything is possible. I don't need you to do any weird signs to prove to me that you're real or supernatural. But I think this whole gold dust thing is really cool, and I'd love to see it for myself... if you want me to..."

A couple weeks went by, taking us to the first night of the Midwinter Meltdown. I was leading the praise and worship team that night. I had picked out a few funky songs, even one for which I was concerned about my own ability to play it properly on the piano(Cover the earth). But I really felt God wanted us to do it that night, and it was the Meltdown kickoff night, so I went with it in faith. We started the pre-service practice with prayer, as usual. Right from the get-go, we could tell it would be a unique night - something was different in the atmosphere. As the other band members, knowing of my concern for how our team would handle that song, started to pray for me, God's presence became so strong. It was the most powerful pre-practice prayer we have ever had - at least in my experience.

That done, 20 minutes or so later, we took our places at our instruments to begin working on the songs. We were passing ideas around, back and forth. As I turned around to signal to Chris, our drummer, the proper tempo for our first song, I stopped dead in mid-action. Something was glittering, floating in the air. Zaza, Chris' wife, was standing behind the set of percussion drums. Our eyes met, mine probably lit up with question marks: "Zaza, see that?" She nodded. I looked at Chris: he saw it too. Then I looked around at the others on the team: they were all seeing it. There was fine gold dust sparkling in the air, like suspended for its light weight, barely even falling. Yet it was falling, as it was beginning to cover the keyboard, other instruments on the platform, and us.

I looked around the room, thinking "Maybe something else is causing these sparkles". There were a couple ladies praying farther out in the large room, waving flags as they went. But there was no way that was causing these sparkles all over the place. There was no way the gold dust would get behind our drum-cage either, not if it came from the flags. And the dust seemed to be falling from nowhere.

We all saw it. It was so cool. My response was "Daddy God, thank you so much for showing me that! I feel so special now - even though it really wasn't that important in the grand scheme of things, you wanted to do that just to bless me." And it sure did.

Now, how about the gems... Well, the story isn't over yet.

I never saw that gold dust falling again. But it kept on raining at Peter in Debbie's for a while. Then, they moved into a new house, earlier this summer. A couple months went by, and gold dust started falling again.

Peter and Debbie are a very godly couple. They used to be in a rock band, and into the lifestyle that accompanies that, including drugs and everything else, until God touched and changed their lives. Now, they're just recently retired, and they take alot of their time to seek God and pray. They spend time every night doing this together.

Recently, Peter had a dream, or a night vision, where he saw an angel, beautiful and huge, standing at the edge of his bed. He began to speak to the angel. Then, God came and stood beside the angel and spoke with Peter too, but Peter couldn't see God, like He was veiled or something. Debbie woke up in bed, and heard Peter speaking, but couldn't see the angel, or anything else. This apparently happens fairly frequently in their home, enough that Debbie knew just to listen and wait until her husband later desribed the whole thing to her.

She listened on for a while, as the conversation carried on. In the vision, God apparently told Peter that He wanted to give him something special. Debbie watched as Peter began reaching up to grab something in the air. Suddenly, still in his vision, Peter reached out saying: "Debbie, this is for you."

She felt something fall from his hand. As she searched in the covers, she suddenly saw a red gem, which she picked up. It was hot as if it had just come from out of a fire.

Shortly after that, another gem showed up out of nowhere, this one for Peter. It was an ember colored gem. And a few days later, it was Debbie's turn to have a dream.

It was a powerful dream, where she saw gems falling all over the church. But people couldn't see them. Only Debbie and her niece, in the dream, could see these gems. Then, in her dream, Debbie saw herself in bed, and found a big pink square gem under the covers. She woke up from the dream, which had felt so real, and began looking for the gem within the covers. Nowhere to be found. Then, she noticed her husband's hand loosely closed up , as if holding a small object. She gently opened up his fingers to find the pink square cut gem from her dream.

These gems are beutiful - I saw them this morning. Debbie and Peter have taken them to several gemologists who have confirmed they are flawless and authentic, but can't quite pin-point what they are. They've been told that these gems are not natural, and are not man-made.

I was surprised with how heavy they are - I've never seen anything like it. As far as gems are concerned, they're huge! And they're cut so perfectly. Apparently, and I didn't notice this, you can see, in the red one, depending on the angle you look at it, a maple leaf, and a cross. I'll have to look at that to confirm. They shine so beautifully too.

The gold dust, they brought that to a gemologist as well. Indeed it is gold, pure gold. They could get money for it if they scooped it up off the furniture and brought it in... but Peter and Debbie aren't into that.

Now, why would God give someone gems, or gold dust? I think it's just cause He's such a loving, cool, supernatural God. And He wants to challenge us to think outside the box. Nothing is impossible to Him, and He wants us to be able to trust Him and walk in the supernatural as well.